Harold in DecemberI watch you tug a rubber band around your wrist—watch fingers flex upward toward the murky dusk-litMexican restaurant where you eat as though you've starved yourselffor anything other than me, and we drove southward in my carbecause you spent the long trip from Eatonville chain smoking,the old truck rattling before it came to a stop underneaththe antique yellow stretch of the streetlight's shadow,and later in the bedroom darkness when you held meyou frightened me with your jittery spontaneity, but laterin the frozen dawn when we kissed goodbye on the openstreet with merely the newly formed frost to chaperone usI lingered on my tiptoes longer than was necessary just tokeep you still and guarded beside me; to keep the kisskindred, to keep the kiss at my beck and call because it hadbeen so long since someone reached out for me in the nightand clung to me. So long since someone slid my body across thesheets just to get better access to the curvature of my spine.I could measure time by the possessiveness of which you clung tothe worn strap of that rubber band, pulling and pushing, turningand angling until finally on the giggle-filled drive home itsnapped with a spark and a disheartened hue;